She Kills Herself

I got a shock news after I came back from Bei Jing. A Chinese language teacher killed herself in May. She came from China this January, and has been here for just five months, she committed suicide.

Heard from the news, she is a very talented Chinese teacher, and Singapore Ministry of Education recruited her this year. She is just 26 years old.

It is really a shock and sad news. I searched internet and tried to find out more background information about this case. There are quite a lot of comments about her death. Most of them come from her former students in China. Nobody believed that this lovely teacher will kill herself…

I have no intention to blame anybody about this teacher’s death. I understand that this is all about her own problem to kill herself. But I just can not help myself to keep thinking of one question: “Is there any possibility of this kind of thing will happen in my school?”
The answer is absolutely “NO”. I came from China as well, I have been here for seven years, up to now, I still work happily in my school! And I really appreciate what the school has done for me. I am grateful for all the help and care I got from the people around me!

Sometimes we have to admit: “To a foreigner, how well she feels about Singapore, feels about Singaporean, it mostly depends on what kind of immediate environment she is in.”

To a China Chinese teacher, what kind of school she works for, what kind of colleagues she has, what kind of people she met here, is her whole world about Singapore.

Very sadly, that young teacher did not like her immediate environment, she chose to kill herself!

Every school wants to create a conducive environment for the well-being of the teachers and students. Maybe the school leaders can ask themselves: “Does this will happen in my school?”

Check In

Hi, I am here! I am coming back!
It seems that I have been away for a long time. Actually I have never left the blog for a single day. After Dr. Quek introduced blog to us, I already had some ideas how to apply it into my daily work, how to introduce blog to my students and help them to improve their Chinese. Not only helping them to improve their language ability, but also building up their Characters, nurturing the whole child to help them be the best they can be.
I would like to help them to create an environment where they can feel safe to express their opinions and feelings, get support and encouragement from their peers and friends. And motivate each other to learn, to grow together. Now I can say, I keep my promise, I have done it!
I did introduce blog to my students. They started to create their own blogs from this school year. Guess what? Some of them started to love blogging! They wrote Chinese e-journals on their blogs, decorated their blogs to make them attractive, and gave comments to each others’ blogs.
Blogging becomes a habit of my students, they do it from their intrinsic motivation. I am really happy to see the outcomes.

Make Our Students Think

We attended the APERA Conference on last Friday. There was a group of teachers from Marsiling Secondary School to do their paper presentation on the use of Knowledge Forum (KF) in the teaching of D&T.

One point which the speaker mentioned in this presentation got my attention. He emphasized the importance of thinking process in the students' learning. And we should prompt the students to think, let the thinking process take place...

This made me think...

Do we give our students enough time to think, or we just pop up the answers by our own?

Do we create an effective learning environment to make our students think?

Do we deliberately to create the suitable moments to let the thinking process take place?

I doubt it...

It seems that we just do not have enough time to spare for thinking...

But teaching thinking is all the education about...

Psychologist John Dewey ever said: "All which the school can or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned... is to develop their ability to think."

Robert Fisher pointed out: "The quality of our lives and of our learning depends on the quality of our thinking..."

Classroom research also finds out that students are better motivated and more engaged in classes they find intellectually stimulating. They like those teachers who make them think...

Do you want to be an effective teacher?

So please make our students think...

It Is A Happy Day!

Before the lesson started this morning, each one of us got a CD on the capture of our group presentations. I had never expected that I could get this... So it is really like a surprise gift for me...

Dr. Quek emphasized that we could not repeat the same teaching style in our daily lesson. Since the child learning style is different, we should present our knowledge in different ways...

She also introduced us some more internet environments. Using "google search", we typed in keyword "web 2.0 framework", so many logos appeared. I started to realize that there are quite a lot online learning environments out there... For most of the logos, I did not know them... I decided to try them out after I went back home...

Dr. Quek let us do case studies, and at the same time, we needed to use one online environment named "Google Docs" to complete our discussion powerpoint slides, and share it with friends...

I realized that there are a lot of online environments out there, but having one thing in common, they are all about connecting, and sharing... The internet creates a lot of platforms for people to use to communicate with each other, and share information, knowledge, thoughts... It is such a powerful tool for our learning, we should make good use of it, and introduce them to our students, let our students get benefits from it as well...

In the lesson, Dr. Quek talked about how to modify the instrument. Based on Moos' Scheme, the instruments share the same background, so we can pick various relevant items which we want to combine them together to form one set of instrument...

After lunch, Dr. Quek taught us how to read research paper, especially how to read the data analysis, the table, the number... and we had a hands on experience to use "SPSS" doing data analysis...

Since I am not a number person, and some new terms need to understand as well, so this part is quite tough for me. I tried very hard to figure out how to calculate the "Scale Mean", "Item Mean", "Reliability"...

The good laugh we got from Group 3 seemed lightened every body's day... Maybe this is the noisiest class we have, but this will be the best lesson I can remember...

I start to think that how we can create a conducive learning environment for our kids?

How we judge our classroom management? Discipline, we need! But what is the purpose of discipline? We want our kids to learn...

We need laughter! A lot of laughter! In a relaxing, enjoyable environment, our kids can learn even better!

As a teacher, how I can create this kind of moment to make our kids enjoy learning?

It is not easy, but I will try my best...

How can we create a conducive learning environment?

How can we create a conducive learning environment for our students?

Theae are some learning points which I drawed from our class lunch session:

1.Teacher will play a very important role in creating a conducive learning environment. A teacher is like a leader in an organization, she/he is the one to set the tone for her/his class. How creative she/he is? How friendly she/he is?... The character of the teacher will influence his students directly. It seems that what kind of teacher will have what kind of class. Do you agree with me?


2.Building the team, and create a sense of belonging for the students of the class.


3.Abolishing outworn concepts, striving to try new things. To bring new teaching concepts and methods into our daily lesson, try our best to create a new excited learning experience in our students' life.


4.Treat our students with respect, treat them well, treat them in the way we ourselves also want to be treated.


5.Build positive relationship with our students. Sometimes, the students learn not for subject matters, but for the teacher whom they like very much.


6.Seek balance between study and life, bring games into learning. Study hard and play hard. Game playing gathers people together. The people's true character will show in the game playing...

7.Create happy moments in our students' life...

These are some thoughts which I draw from our class lunch session. I feel that Dr. Quek is creating an unique learning experience in my life...

Teaching is about creating experience in one's life. This is what I learnt from this module. I will try my best to create a conducive learning environment for my students and creating some positive learning experience in their memory...

Thank you Dr. Quek for the learning experience she gave me...

Our Lunch

It is lunch time, this reminds me the lunch time I spent with my course mates and our teacher Dr. Quek. I miss the lunch session, and I think each one of us will remember the time we spent with Dr. Quek. After completing this course, the lunch session will become the most remarkable moment in our memory...

We are all in one class, Here is where we belong...

I call our lunch time is our lunch session, because this is really a session, every one in Dr. Quek's class will have lunch together.

I remember in our first day lesson, when the lunch time was coming, I did not finish my work, I wanted to use the lunch time to finish the work and catch up some readings. I did ask Dr. Quek if I could remain in the classroom to finish my reading. I got an answer: “No!”

Okay, I had to follow the class...

We were really moving as a class, Dr. Quek was leading this group of teacher students to the lunch place. On the way, we would take the same lift; if some one went to the toilet, the whole group of us would wait for that person... it is just like what Brian wrote on his Blog. Yes, it was a little bit like kindergarten kids, but the feeling which belongs to one group is just nice! After some days moving around, Karen was even able to point out who is not here with us at a glance... Amazing, yah?


I will bring you to a new place next time...

Dr. Quek would bring us to a different place to have our lunch each every day. Whenever we finished our lunch, Dr. Quek would say: “I will bring you to a new place next time...”

For some places, even the teachers who graduated from NIE would not be very familiar with. It seemed that Dr. Quek was leading us to exploring the food courts in NIE and NTU. The new eating place brought some uncertain into our daily life, it made everybody excited. For me, even just sitting in a new nice place, looking around, it is already enough to make me happy... We are really looking forward to our lunch time every day...

Oh, Please... Do not treat us too nicely!

It is just like what Brian wrote on his Blog, Dr. Quek even bought drinks, snacks, and the whole fish for us. I remember when the first time I got her drinks, I even asked around "why does she buy this for us?"... Nobody knew the answer of this “stupid question”. As the treat going on, our hearts also become heavier and heavier... I just do not know how I can repay her back... Some times somebody treats you too nicely; you will feel a sense of uneasiness... I am really worried that I can not do well in my study and disappoint her... “I will do my best...” I said to her in my heart...

Come, Let's Play Games!

After our lunch, Dr. Quek brought us to a nice cosy lounge to play games!

Yuan Han joined the boys' group to play table football match. Some others formed the group to play chess, the rest of us were happy to sit comfortably to watch others playing.

Yuan Han was really good at playing table football match. I just wondered how she could handle the little toy boys to shoot the ball into the goal in one kick? It was really cool!

And this reminded me the old days...
“Hi, hello, play properly, okay? I only have this one coin... We have to make good use of it. We have to play longer...” This is another table football game played by my old colleagues. Why I can still remember this, even the words they said I can still remember very clearly...?

Some one thought that I had a good memory. Is that all about memory?
From Dr. Seng's class we learnt that the memory very much related to the person's emotion. “Emotionally charged events are remembered better”; “Pleasant emotions are usually remembered better than unpleasant ones”; “It's the emotional arousal, not the importance of the information, that helps memory”; “The stronger the emotions aroused, the greater the effect on memory"...

So this is all about emotion...


This is the journal which I wrote about our lunch session, what are the learning points I draw from the lunch time we spent with Dr. Quek, I will write the learning points and some my thoughts in my next journal...

Do we need using computer to teach language?

I read Kelvin's Blog yesterday, and some points in his journal really inspired me to think deeply...

Some questions come across my mind.

"Do we need to use technology to teach language?"

"What kind of role the technology will play in teaching language?"

The world is changing, students change over years. This generation of youth is different from before. They are computer-savvy generation. Despite all of these, in terms of teaching, some teachers still prefer "Chalk and Talk" method, and they are more comfortable with "the Teacher-Centered" traditional teaching style...

Especially for language teachers, they argue:
The science teacher will benefit more from the technology. Technology can help them to interpret the phenomenon more directly and clearly, and can help them to simplify the theory...
But for language teaching, we teach students how to appreciate the words, they need to be creative, they need use their own imagination to feel, to image... the technology will limit their imagination. This is something like "Watching TV", you get pleasure and stimulus from watching TV, but it is a passive way to learn and to get information. Watching too much TV, you will become dumb... But reading books is an active way to learn and get information, it makes you think, reading makes you wiser...

So do we need to create a "computer-supported classroom learning environment" to teach language?
Some teachers also point out the outcome of using computer to teach language is not better than the traditional way of teaching language. Some times if the teacher is not very familiar with the technology, it will waste time to settle things down, and the technology will distract the students' attention...

I understand the concern which language teachers point out. And I also agree that maybe the traditional way of teaching language can get better results in some cases.

So which one is better, "using computer" or not?

I think this is all about the mindset; we can not use technology for the sake of using technology.
How we use the technology to teach language is very important!

If we only let students learn from the technology, we only use technology as a new tool to teach language, the mindset is still the old mindset, the way how we teach is still the same, the way how we think is still the same, then I do not expect we can get much different outcome compared to the traditional way of teaching, even worse.

But if we can let students learn with the technology, with so many Learning Platforms in the world now, “ Wikis”, “Blogs”, “Forums”, “Games”, “Ipods”, “Podcasts”... the technology can prompt the students to do independent learning, prepare them for the lifelong learning. Technology can create a conducive learning environment for our students. In this learning environment, the students can acquire the skills of collaboration, communication, and independent learning. From this point of view, the way of using technology to teach will be more meaningful than the traditional way of teaching.

Do you agree with me?